Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Job, Career, and Educational Resources in GALILEO

Are you looking for a job after graduation? Or, do you want a better job while attending school? Are you trying to figure out what you want to do with your life? Are you considering graduate school? GALILEO offers several resources for researching careers, continuing education and searching for jobs.

Another resource is GAcollege411, which provides career and education planning college students, and adult learners. Resources include tools for matching students to careers, preparing for college entrance tests, comparing Georgia colleges and universities, applying for financial aid, and more. There is also a My Portfolio feature to help you keep up with all the planning.

NetLibrary offers ebooks on many topics, including ebooks on choosing careers, searching for jobs, writing resumes and cover letters, and handling job interviews. Titles include Haldane’s Best Cover Letters for Professionals, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Perfect Interview, and Interview Strategies That Lead to Job Offers.

Career and Technical Education provides articles, book chapters, and other documents related to many types of careers as well as choosing a career and searching for a job.

LearningExpress Library designed to provide students with the highest quality resources available. The interactive tools will help you reach your academic and professional goals, and improved job placement. If you are pursuing an advanced degree, LearningExpress Library offers a comprehensive selection of test preparation resources, to help prepare for the GRE and other graduate school entrance exams. You can even prepare for occupation certification and licensing exams in many of today's fastest growing career fields.

Business Source Complete offers career guides for countries all around the world as well as articles and book chapters to assist with job hunting. Business Source Complete is also a great source for company information if you want to learn about a company before applying for the job. (And, check out these other resources on finding company information in GALILEO.)

Finally, for students just starting out in career exploration, Encyclopedia Britannica has articles about some professions for students to learn what it means to be a nurse, teacher, police officer, lawyer, and more.

Find these and other Career resources in GALILEO Library or GALILEO Scholar.

Article and search links may not work off site. Click the database name first for access.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Announcing GIL-Find : A New Alternative to Searching the Catalog

The library would like to announce the new GIL-Find library catalog interface. Meant to compliment the Classic GIL, GIL-Find provides an alternative for searching for items within our library catalog. Both options will remain available to you. Please try searching in both to see the differences yourself.

Designed to be more intuitive for users trying discover resources, GIL-Find offers some really fun and unique tools to help you with your research. One of the major differences you will notice is that GIL-Find uses faceted searching. Faceted searching allows you to narrow your search according to location, format, topic, language, time period, etc. just by clicking! This is particularly useful when you're browsing or not exactly sure how to define your search parameters.

Here's an example of what the search results might look for a basic search on "cats". You can see that a wide variety of results will appear. If you decide you're mostly interested in reading fiction about cats, you may want to click on the "P-Language and Literature" link under the Call Number category. That will narrow your results to only fictional works about cats.





What else can it do? Text yourself a citation. Directly export an item into a citation manager (EndNote, Refworks). See an image of the cover of the work. Add tags to an item record. Add your own user review. Set up an RSS feed of searches. Get suggestions of similar items. Read or preview the book in Google Books. And more! There are so many options that we're excited about!

Your feedback is important. We're looking forward to hearing what you think of the new GIL-Find!







Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Join Us for an African American Read-In Tomorrow

Columbus State University Libraries would like to invite you to be a part of the African American Read-In tomorrow, February 17, 2011 at 2:00 pm in the Schwob
Library – Forum Area (1st Floor). Light refreshments will be served.

Students, faculty, and staff are invited to come and join in the READ-IN.

The READ-IN is a gathering of friends sharing their favorite readings, please join us!

Readers
LaSada Williams
Esther Oludiminu
Jasmine Jones
Shirquetta Standifer
Dr. James Brewbaker
Dr. Barbara Hunt
Crystal Woods
Jackie Radebaugh

Prospective Candidates for Dean of Libraries to Visit


Two finalists to become the next Dean of Libraries at Columbus State University will visit campus February 21-25. An open presentation will be offered by both candidates in the auditorium of the Center for Commerce and Technology.

  • Feb. 21-22
  • Presentation: Monday, Feb. 21 2:30-3:30 p.m.
  • Vita

Debbie Holmes, Director of Library Services at College of Coastal Georgia
  • Feb. 24-25
  • Presentation: Thursday, Feb. 24 2:30-3:30 p.m.
  • Vita

Friday, February 11, 2011

ProQuest Databases Downtime on February 12-February 13

Due to maintenance, all of CSU Libraries' ProQuest databases will be unavailable from Saturday, February 12th at 10:00 PM to Sunday, February 13th at 10:00 AM.

We apologize for any convenience that this may cause you.

Please contact us for additional information at: 706-562-1492 or 706-562-1493.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Database of the Month: Black Drama


Black Drama contains the full text of 1,200 plays written from the mid-1800s to the present by more than 100 playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries. The collection includes musical comedies, domestic dramas, folk dramas, history plays, anti-slavery plays, one-act plays, and other works. Many were published in a wide range of magazines and anthologies; others have never before been published or performed. Students and scholars will have immediate access to plays addressing a wide range of struggles and triumphs, including migration to Northern cities, mothers’ keeping families together, exploitation by white land owners, interracial unity, racial violence, civil rights activism, and the black war hero. The plays explore themes including civil rights, desegregation, and a wide range of ideologies – integrationist and separatist, revolutionary and nationalist. While the collection is strong in social and political drama, it also covers domestic drama and satires.

Much of the collection consists of previously unpublished plays by writers such as Langston Hughes, Ed Bullins, Willis Richardson, Femi Euba, Amiri Baraka, Randolph Edmonds, Zora Neale Hurston, and many others. The database also covers key writings of the Harlem Renaissance, works performed for the Federal Theatre Project, and plays by critically acclaimed dramatists of the 1940s. In addition, the collection covers the Black Arts movement of the sixties and seventies and works performed by the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School (BARTS), The Negro Ensemble Company, and other companies.

Each play is extensively and deeply indexed, allowing both keyword and multi-fielded searching, and is accompanied by reference materials, and images. The result is an exceptionally deep and collection that illustrates the many purposes that black theater has served.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Darlene Cooper Announced as Cougar Pride Award Recipient


We are proud to announce that Darlene Cooper, Cataloging Assistant in Technical Services is the proud recipient of the Cougar Pride Award. This quarterly award is designed to recognize staff employees who excel in the following:

1. Consistent demonstration of excellent job performance to include dedication to work ethic; and demonstrated methods of improving efficiency in the workplace, as well as other examples of excellence.

2. Commitment to CSU’s mission and values.
3.Demonstrated teamwork & exemplary working relationships with supervisors and peers.

4. Exceptional attitude and performance in serving the needs of students, staff, faculty and visitors.

5. Any other criteria offered by the nominator that reflects the performance of the nominee and meets the goals and objectives of the university.

Darlene is a tremendous asset to the Technical Services Department, the library, and the university. She contributes to student learning by making books and other library materials accessible in the online catalog. She attends university events when possible and participated in the CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) training.

Darlene has a strong work ethic and performs her job duties independently. She participates on library committees, helps with library events, and is willing to jump in when needed.

Congratulations Darlene.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Puzzle Watch: Impossible Purrfect Finish





The puzzle box was labeled "impossible" and for a while it seemed it was. After over a month the cats puzzle has finally been completed. Oddly, there are a few missing pieces and a few extra pieces that don't seem to fit anywhere.

The new puzzle is now out on the table. This time it is a perfectly normal white winter scene of the Snake River and surrounding mountains. Hopefully by the time it's finished, winter will be as well. Stop in to Simon Schwob Library to work on the new puzzle and your approaching assignments.

Final Installment of the 2011 Faculty Research Forum Series.


Please join us for the 2011 Faculty Research Forum Series. The one hour forums are held from 12:30 - 1:30, and offer an excellent opportunity for the faculty to share their research interests with faculty, staff, students, and the community. Each hour long forum consists of two twenty minute presentations and a twenty minute question period.

The third and final forum is scheduled for tomorrow, February 3. The final installment this year will be presented by Mr. Orion Wertz, Associate Professor of Fine Art in Painting and Ms. Jacqueline Radebaugh, Assistant Professor of Library Science.


Mr. Orion Wertz will be presenting:


Floating World, Floating Captions

My installation exhibits are comprised of drawings that I turn into stickers and use to "label" a space. This process of converting drawings to labels is a reaction to my place in a landscape of consumerism. I am interested in the dubious space that individual acts must occupy in a world of mass-production and disposability. The artworks are highly legible and appear to fill up space even though they are physically disposable.


Ms. Jacqueline Radebaugh will be presenting:


Searching Library Databases: A Social Approach to Information Retrieval

My presentation will use the study of Social Informatics to propose real life examples of how social activities inherent to information retrieval, such as browsing print library resources, can be implemented in modern journal article databases. I will discuss the popular idea of "berry picking" for information as the basis of my analysis and how this practice directly relates to the social structures that people use to find information. I will then present some ideas of how modern journal article databases can be enhanced to promote activities, such as browsing and chaining of seed documents that are so important to the "conversations" needed to promote research and scholarship.


We hope that you have enjoyed this educational and informative series. Many thanks to the presenters and all associated with the program.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

ACM Digital Library Complete Access


We are pleased to announce complete access to the ACM Digital Library. The ACM Digital Library is a complete collection of all of ACM’s publications, including ACM journals, conference proceedings, magazines, newsletters, and multimedia titles. The ACM Digital Library contains the largest and most complete full-text archive of articles on computing available today, consisting of:
  • 2.0+ Million Pages of full-text articles
  • 272,000 Articles
  • 20,000 New full-text articles added each year
  • 40+ High Impact Journals
  • 270+ Conference Proceedings Titles
  • 2,000+ Proceedings Volumes
  • 9 Magazines (including the flagship Communications of the ACM)
  • 43 Special Interest Groups contributing content
  • 800+ Multimedia Files containing audio, video, animations, and more.
Also, take a look at this fantastic video describing not only ACM, but the ACM Digital Library too.

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